Ok...so it's been awhile, and now I want to change directions. Perhaps writing here, even if nobody reads it, will allow me to align my thoughts, or at least get some thoughts out there. I'm looking for help too people. If you do follow this over the next few weeks, unhinge my arguments, suggest readings that could be helpful, or just comment as you will. At times my personal frustrations with non-thesis life may bleed through. Ignore that. So, let's begin.
This morning I woke to thoughts of many different things. Mostly revisiting and trying to fantastically undo certain words or non-words I may have let go. Anyway, I also woke to the idea of "My life post-Gutenberg." I don't mean the actor, I mean the press. The printing press. I'm not sure exactly what this means, but I have some idea. For those of you unfamiliar with the textual arguments, and the loss of the book as we know it, there is plenty of info out there which I won't bother presenting here. Just know that in linguistic philosophy circles the written text vs. the spoken text has been a debate for the extent of the existence of the written word (the first reference I know of is in Plato's "Phaedrus," and I know of it through none other than Derrida, who provided us with the table from which to continue the debate in "Of Grammatology"). Ok, so there's that. Foundation.
So, in the same year that "Of Grammatology" hit's the American consciousness, 1972, (I may be a little wrong in this, but I'm not worried, this is definitely post french publication, and as these things are not of one person but a result of the culture, I'm just laying the mental imagery for myself in an arbitrary timeline) Robert Grenier writes "I HATE SPEECH". Hmmm...no big deal you say. But it is. The Gutenberg press appeared in the mid 15th century and is arguably the most influential invention of all time. It allowed the masses access to information, allowed for social thought to be enlightened by the commoner (though this perhaps took centuries to develop) which could be closely linked to the rise of capitalism as we know it in an argument I'm not going to have, and, artistically speaking, it released the waters of what we call our current "textual existence." Current philosophers say that the printing press created an "alphabetic monopoly" that led to the reduction of symbol culture, that repressed the visual development of social coding and replaced it with a standardized textual world, one in which the letter is favored over the image.
I think this is a relatively simple argument, and one that I overly simplify here, and also one that can easily be dismissed to an extent. If one removes the words text from a can of Coca-Cola, but leaves the pattern in place, we are able to consume the meaning. We are a culture, a species I say, that exists in a world of visual coding, text is simply a way for us to translate the visual world because, try as we might, we cannot speak in images.
To take another step back, for my own unscrambling, and if anybody is actually interested, the foundation of linguistic arguments has for a very long time focused on syntax. Ferdinand de Saussure, a Swiss linguist, first (well, not first, but famously) exposed the arbitrary nature of individual words. His work led to Roman Jakobson and the Russian school of Structuralists examining language from this syntactical standpoint, i.e. words only mean anything in combination with other words. In the artistic movements, Modernity, Surrealism and Dada, which surrounded these arguments we can see this tension at play. Modernity suffered from realism, Surrealism suffered from over-excitement of combination and surprise, and Dada was just suffering. Then something enormous happened. Poetry looked west. Poetry became American.
I'm taking huge logical leaps here. I know.
So we see this new American movement in poetics, or several. Some weighed the power of speech over text, but some, those who seem to be the most influential in the contemporary argument, weighed the written word just as heavily. Poems wed the page, so to speak. So we see figures like Charles Olson suddenly slipping in symbols, the slash most specifically (look up "Kingfishers") Robert Duncan inserts little drawings, and Jack Spicer says "I won't to write a poem which is nothing more than the pointing of a finger" and "No one listens to poetry," they read it (ok, liberal interpretation there). Text itself became a revolutionary act, not the spoken text, but the words on a page, sitting there permanent, both arguable and not, but, nonetheless, text became a real artifact, not just a translation of thought.
So then comes along this one word in the mid-sixties from the rushed typewriter of Aram Saroyan (as the story goes). "lighght". That's it. Concrete poetry was nothing new, not even in America, but this little word set off a maelstrom in the world of poetry, and even congressional politics. But I'm not concerned with such arguments. I'm concerned with this word, this poem, as it exists in 2009, the age of the internet, the world post-Gutenberg.
I suddenly awoke today to the thought that physical text, poetry as art, may only have a place next to paintings in museums, or locked away with the statues in the basement as Ashbery would have it. Its true that electronic poetry has opened the doors for some very interesting artistic phenomena, but the induction of e-poetry should not have a baby with the bath water result. It really changes nothing, but adds to what's already here. So, what is it about physically holding a book and looking at the text that is so fascinating to someone like me, and so insubstantial to so many? This is the question that I ask as I move forward.
I have laundry to do.
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2 comments:
it's unclear to me whether your curiosities are about symbolism or visual structure on the page. perhaps both?
i made a shift at one point from working primarily with words (writing, oratory) to training primarily in physical movement (dance, etc.), and i largely lost my ability to communicate verbally. i don't meant o imply that i couldn't talk, but i was often frustrated-- i began losing words and favoring gesture to express myself. it was disconcerting, but at the same time held a freshness that was exciting in how i interacted with the world. i like to think that balancing those realms is the key to performance much in the way that balancing the visual elements of the page with the words themselves is the key to poetry.
but i don't actually know anything about poetry.
except that i believe this--spacing and other visual cues are directions on how something should be read. that has always been true, but perhaps ignored in favor of punctuation, which does the job more clearly because of there is already an agreement of what signifies which directions. other forms of visual cues (negative space, alternative structures, changes in size/scope, material, what have you) are vital if the work intends or in some way requires an openness of interpretation, a cetain type of fluidity, but devastating if not--if requiring a different type of fluidity. the question becomes about the artist's intention of the experience of the reader as much as the expression of the artist. and perhaps also whether one is attempting to write poetry or prose. :)
wow. could i have written anything more useless? coffee time.
(on a side note, unless i misunderstood you, i venture to say the coca cola symbol is a reverse example. we remember the pattern because initially we identified the words, then the related concept (the product), as a result of the process the symbol sticks, thus referring always back to the brand (the words). it's part of the simplistic genius of marketing--a loop of association. i don't believe someone who has never seen the letters would then identify the symbol.)
I understand what you're saying, and I agree. I have major points of argumentative problems. Also, and I suppose this is a more personal experience (rather than theoretical), I've become detached from syntactical experience in the world at times, similar to what you describe, but I'm not sure similar enough to warrant a direct correlation. What I mean is, I've begun to make connexions without being bogged down with syntactical illusions or the need to forge those connexions. It has hindered my ability to fully communicate certain desires or effectively (and affectively) express myself. I think in fragments, and connect fragments, but what is missing is the explanatory.
I guess what I'm getting at is that in some way I view a word as a sound/image and connect it with other sound/images without the proper standard communicative techniques. I suppose that's why I work so much in the abstract textures of language.
And you're right. My Coca-Cola analogy was inherently flawed.
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